Moai monoliths

The tools used for carving the moai statues are called toki, and are simple handheld chisels. They have been found in countless numbers in all excavations at Rano Raraku – particularly around the statues. The highest quality toki are made of hawaiite, which is the hardest kind of rock found at Easter Island.

Using basalt stone picks, the Easter Island Moai were carved from the solidified volcanic ash of Rano Raraku volcano. They are all monolithic the carvings are created in one piece and an average weight of 20 tons and measuring 20 feet tall or more. One unfinished statue is 69 feet tall, estimated to weigh 270 tons.

Rapa Nui (or Easter Island, as it is commonly known) is home to the enigmatic Moai, stone monoliths that have stood watch over the island landscape for hundreds of years. Their existence is a marvel of human ingenuity — and their meaning a source of some mystery.

Though moʻai are whole-body statues, they are often referred to as “Easter Island heads” in some popular literature. All but 53 of the more than 900 moʻai known to date were carved from tuff (a compressed volcanic ash) from Rano Raraku, where 394 moʻai in varying states of completion are still visible today.

Easter Island is famous for its stone statues of human figures, known as moai (meaning “statue”). The island is known to its inhabitants as Rapa Nui. The moai were probably carved to commemorate important ancestors and were made from around 1000 C.E. until the second half of the seventeenth century.

13 feet

Statue of Unity

Top 10 Tallest Statues in the world

• 7 Sendai Daikannon, Japan, 100 meter.
• 6 Emperors Yan and Huang, China, 106 meter.
• 5 Guan Yin of the South Sea of Sanya, China, 108 Meter.
• 4 Ushiku Daibutsu, Japan 110 meter.
• 3 Laykyun Setkyar, Myanmar, 116 meter.
• 2 Spring Temple Buddha, China, 153 meter.
• 1 Statue of Unity, India, 182 meter.

So, explore 10 of the tallest statues in the world through this article.

• Statue of Unity.
• Spring Temple Buddha.
• Laykyun Sekkya.
• Ushiku Daibutsu.
• Sendai Daikannon.
• Qianshou Qianyan Guanyin of Weishan.
• Great Buddha of Thailand.
• Hokkaido Kannon.